ASA’s History in a “Nutshell”

This is one in a series of articles commemorating ASA’s centennial year

by Michael Murphy, ASA Governance Office

In the summer of 1905, Professor C.W.A. Veditz of George Washington University initiated a discussion among sociologists throughout the United States. He wrote to several dozen people to ask if there was need or desire to form an organization of sociologists. Dozens of letters were exchanged that summer. Ultimately, consensus was that the time had come for a society of sociologists in the United States.

In early December, Veditz and eight others^* wrote to roughly 300 people inviting them to attend a special session during the American Economic Association and American Political Science Association meetings later that month to discuss the possible formation of a society of sociologists. At 3:30 pm on Wednesday, December 27, approximately 50 people (yes, there was one woman present!) gathered in McCoy Hall at Johns Hopkins University.¹

Before the meeting was adjourned, the group acted to form a new society of sociologists. The group debated whether this new society should be federated with another existing organization, such as the American Economic Association, but ultimately decided the new society should be an independent entity. At the end of the day, those gathered formed a five-person committee to develop a plan for the new society and how it should be governed.

All concerned re-convened at 3:30 pm the next day to review the proposed structure of the society. The following men were elected officers of the new society: Lester Ward (President), William Sumner (First Vice President), Franklin Giddings (Second Vice President), C.W.A. Veditz (Secretary and Treasurer). Council members were: E.A. Ross, W.F. Wilcox, Albion Small, Samuel Lindsay, D.C. Wells, and William Davenport.

From Birth to Growth Spurt . . .

When they left Baltimore, the birth of the American Sociological Society was complete, a Constitution had been adopted, officers were elected, and plans were made for the second Annual Meeting of the new Society.

As sociology courses grew in number at universities throughout the country, the membership of the American Sociological Society increased from an initial count of 115 to more than 1,000 members by 1920. In the early decades those who were elected President and Secretary of the Society provided all labor necessary to manage the Society. Those early officers handled production of the annual Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, coordination of annual meetings, mailing of dues statements and member renewals, and all administrative aspects of managing the Society.

In February 1936, the American Sociological Review was launched. The first issue featured more than a dozen articles, several ads, book reviews, official proceedings, and announcements about the doings and happenings in the sociological world.

. . . to Paid Staff

Through the 1940s, however, as the membership of the Society continued to grow and the programs of the Society continued to expand, the Council came to realize that it could no longer ask so much of those elected to leadership roles in the Society. In 1948, when Talcott Parsons was informed of his election to the presidency of the Society, he came to realize that the burden placed upon officers was huge. Parsons and others decided it was time to take the step of creating an office for the Society. Parsons later wrote that “the business of the Association’s office had grown to a point where it was no longer reasonable to expect a volunteer member to take responsibility for it; to was essential to employ a paid administrator.”^{2, 3}

Matilda at the Helm

In 1949 the first Executive Office of the American Sociological Society was formed and housed on the campus of New York University. Matilda White Riley, wife of fellow sociologist John W. Riley, was hired on a part-time basis as the first staff person of the Society. [See obituary and tributes in the January 2005 Footnotes] The Society was most fortunate to have someone with the drive and focus of Matilda White Riley to shepherd the Society through the next decade. While paid for part-time work, she usually provided full-time service. Sociologist Matilda Riley wrote in later years that preparation for annual meetings usually involved loading the family station wagon with Society records and materials and driving to the meeting site to set up.

When Matilda Riley announced her resignation as Executive Officer in 1961, the Council decided it was time for the next big step in the growth of the Society, which had been christened as the “American Sociological Association” a few years earlier. Janice Harris Hopper stepped in to serve for two years as ASA Administrative Officer to keep the Association functioning while Council considered options.⁴ Finally, in January 1963, a special meeting of Council was called and the decision was made to rent office space in Washington, DC, and hire the first full-time Executive Officer for the Association.

. . . to Washington, DC

By the time of the move from New York to Washington in 1963, membership had grown to more than 7,500 sociologists. To serve the needs of those 7,500 members there was a staff of seven full-time employees assisted by the occasional help of five additional people. The Association was extraordinarily active throughout the 1960s; every year saw the launch of a new initiative. In 1963 the first issue of the Sociology of Education was published; in 1964 the first Guide to Graduate Departments was published, in 1965 the first issue of The American Sociologist was published; and in 1966 the first issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior was published.

As had been the case in earlier decades, the Association continued to lead the country on a variety of social issues. ASA served as a positive public example by electing E. Franklin Frazier to serve as President in 1948, and Dorothy Swaine Thomas to serve as President in 1952. In 1979, when many organizations and jurisdictions were trying to take rights away from gay people, ASA affirmed the civil rights of gay men and women. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s a new generation was coming of age. The general social, political, and cultural upheavals of the period were not left outside the door of the ASA but were woven throughout the organization.

In the 1980s, the Association welcomed a U.S. President who had majored in sociology and a Vice President who had minored in sociology, only to suffer through eight years of disdain from a presidential administration that did not value social science research. Though disheartened, the membership held steady during the 1980s.

The 1990s ushered in the Clinton presidential years and increased attention to social issues, research, and concerns of interest to sociology. The decade that followed saw the Association rapidly embrace the emerging new information technologies to allow greater and better service to members. Computers became commonplace and e-mail went from being a unique tool to an everyday means of communication.

The Association has not lost its original focus, continuing in the early years of the new century to debate the big issues of the day, including affirmative action, health-care disparities, socioeconomic disparities, same-sex marriage, and military action in Iraq. With an outward focus rather than an inward focus, the Association undertook a new, risky venture in 2002 with the launch of Contexts, a magazine aimed to bring the fruits of sociological research directly to the general public.

As we enter 2005 and the centennial of the founding of the Association; membership stands at a record of more than 14,000; nearly 5,600 people attended the latest Annual Meeting; a record-number (44) of special interest Sections, 9 scholarly publications, and a host of other activities too numerous to list.

We salute the wisdom and foresight of the early pioneers who gathered in Baltimore in 1905 to found a new society. They not only gave the sociological world a gathering place but gave a greater voice for sociology and sociologists. One hundred years later we are still going strong as we celebrate 100 successful years of service to the field.

References

¹American Sociological Society. 1906. “Organization of the American Sociological Society: Official Report,” American Sociological Review, January, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 555-569.
²Parsons, Talcott. 1966. “The Editor’s Column,” The American Sociologist, February, pp. 1, 69-70.
³Hughes, Everett C. 1962. “Letter from the President to the Members of the American Sociological Association,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 27, No. 6, pp. 902-903.
⁴Hopper, Janice H. 1963. “Report of the Administrative Officer,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 1001-1005.

Background Sources

Riley, Matilda W. 1960. “Membership of the American Sociological Association, 1950-1959” Matilda White Riley, American Sociological Review, Vol. 25, No. 6, pp. 914-926.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Association, two special issues of The American Sociologist were produced in February and May, 1981. Those two issues featured 27 articles from previous and current leaders looking back over the previous 75 years and ahead to the next 25 years. Those articles are a valuable source of material for anyone interested in the history of the Association.

American Sociological Association. 1998. “Registers of Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress: The Records of the American Sociological Association.”

Note